The Coulter Faculty Commons exists to support a campus community centered on excellence
in teaching and learning. We provide a wide variety of services to support teaching
and learning, including consultations, assessments, workshops, publications, and more.
These services are available to Western Carolina University faculty, staff, and graduate
students.
Teaching and Learning Services
Consultation
All consultations and services are voluntary, confidential and are conducted with
high professional standards. Consultation topics include, but are not limited to,
the following or click here to Learn More
- Active learning
- Course analysis
- Course Design
- Civil Discourse in the Classroom
- Classroom Management
- Faculty time management
- Large classes (transitioning to, strategies for making large classes feel smaller)
- Online Teaching and Learning
- Rubric development and utilization
- Quality Matters
- Syllabus and schedule construction
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects
- Student Learning Outcome (SLO) writing and alignment
- Team-Based Learning (and other forms of problem-based learning designs)
- Test construction
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Consultations may also cover work-life balance and other issues related to faculty
support. To request any of these services, please contact the Coulter Faculty Commons, or visit our offices in Hunter Library.
Assessment
The two main types of assessment at WCU are Course Assessment and Program Assessment.
Course Assessment evaluates the effectiveness of instruction whereas Program Assessment
evaluates if a program serves its intended purpose. Making better use of assessment
data improves the value of any course or program in the following ways:
- Stronger course design
- Thorough analysis of assessment data
- Effective education about assessment tools
- Improved program clarification
- Better understanding of assessment processes
- Increased usability of assessment results
Academic Integrity Support
Honesty is an important part of the education process and needs to be maintained to
make college worth more than a degree alone. WCU created the Academic Integrity Policy to uphold this standard, focusing on four main offenses that threaten the quality
of student education:
- Cheating – Using, or attempting to use, unauthorized materials, information, or study aids
in any academic exercise.
- Fabrication – Creating and/or falsifying information or citation in any academic exercise.
- Plagiarism – Representing the words or ideas of someone else as one’s own in any academic exercise.
- Self-plagiarism – Reusing work that you have already published or submitted for a class. It can involve
re-submitting an entire paper, copying, paraphrasing passages from your previous work,
or recycling old data.
- Facilitation – Helping or attempting to help someone to commit a violation of the Academic Integrity
Policy in any academic exercise (e.g. allowing another person to copy information
during an examination).
Learn More About our Academic Integrity Support
Small Group Analysis
Small Group Analysis is a method used to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching strategies
in order to help instructors improve their techniques and offer better educational
experiences. This exercise provides the instructor with constructive feedback from
students by keeping the suggestions anonymous and encouraging free communication by
eliminating the pressure of direct confrontation.
Five Simple Steps to Complete:
- Instructors submit requests to schedule a date and time with an Educational Developer
in the Faculty Commons.
- The Instructor and Educational Developer member meet to determine the purpose of the
SGA.
- The Educational Developer attends arranged class period and takes 30 minutes without
the instructor present to obtain student feedback.
- The Faculty Commons staff member formulates the summaries into a report explaining
the student feedback.
- The CFC staff member and the Instructor have a final consultation discussing the report
and possible next steps.
Advantages to benefit long-term improvement:
- The anonymous nature makes students more comfortable sharing their feedback.
- The student feedback tells instructors which elements of their teaching methods are
effective or could be more effective.
- Research indicates this method is highly effective (Hurney, C., Harris, N., Bates
Prins, S., & Kruck, S. E. (2014). The Impact of a Learner-Centered, Mid-Semester Course
Evaluation on Students. The Journal of Faculty Development, 28(3), 55-62.
Additional Resources
Syllabus
Trying to write your syllabus? Explore our tools and templates to help you fulfill
all the elements needed. Syllabus Resources
Other Resources
Other Publications and Resources
